


The Strange Circuitous Courting of Miss P.

by blythechild



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Denial of Feelings, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Gift Giving, Inappropriate Behavior, Letters, Literal Sleeping Together, Long-Distance Friendship, Male-Female Friendship, Matchmaking, Meddling, Mutual Pining, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Romantic Friendship, Secrets, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-06
Updated: 2015-09-06
Packaged: 2018-04-19 11:22:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 13,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4744448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blythechild/pseuds/blythechild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Penelope Garcia knows that Reid is in love with Emily Prentiss. She's been watching him make a mess of it for eight years. When she confronts him about his latest act of buffoonery, she decides that it's time to get involved with it herself.</p><p> </p><p>This is a work of fanfiction and as such I do not claim ownership over the characters herein. It was created as a personal amusement. This story includes mature themes and should not be read by those under the age of 14.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A note for grammar gurus: there are a lot of run-on sentences ahead. It was done purposefully. If that sort of thing drives you nuts you may want to avoid reading this. I'm not going to make apologies for the specific style I chose for this story - please know that I haven't suddenly lost my mind or a basic knowledge of SPAG.
> 
> Canon specifics from the 200th episode as well as the season 9 finale have been used here, but I have also changed certain elements from both to suit my needs.

Prentiss comes back to help with an international human trafficking case and even though the situation is just extremely-terrible-awful, everyone ends up being all right and Garcia gets most of her baby chicks back in the nest for a while and it’s hard not to find that awesome. Miss P. looks great: all designer, feminist, ‘fuck-you’ power and cool, anime-heroine assurance, but Garcia knows too much about costuming and skillful make-up application to miss the darkness under her eyes that she’s masking with expensive cover-up. It’s not startling, not like it was in the months leading up to her departure from the BAU, and let’s face it, it’s probably not unusual either. She’s a section chief now; there are bound to be plenty of sleepless nights that go along with that title. But Garcia’s determined to use all of her girly wiles to figure out what’s scooting around in her friend’s beautiful noggin before she wings off back to England. That’s what girlfriends are for: to wade into your mess and play around in it like a spastic kitten in a bag of wool.

And that’s how Garcia came to be spying from a housekeeping closet of the George Hotel watching Emily and Reid give each other a not-so-friendly hug (it was, like, six Mississippis) at seven-thirty in the morning. They pull apart and Garcia sees the smile on Emily’s face as Reid offers her one of those lame hand waves that he does, and she thinks _Finally, thank God…_ until she really soaks in their body language. And then she’s all _Dammit! What’s it gonna take?!?_

She waits for Reid to pass by the closet and then she pounces dragging him into the bleach-scented interrogation suite with a significant bone to pick.

“What are you doing?”

“Garcia? Jesus! You know that I’m armed, right?” It’s then that Garcia realizes Reid was reaching for his weapon. Oopsey… yeah, maybe a little warning next time.

“Umm, sorry. But what are you doing here?”

“What are _you_ doing here, Garcia? And hiding out in a closet no less.”

“I came to take Emily out to brunch before she flies home. _What are you doing coming out of her hotel room at seven in the morning?_ I’m holding out hope that you two finally committed to the obvious…”

Reid blinks. “What? You mean sex? No… jeez, no. C’mon, Garcia… It’s not like that.”

“Well, what’s it like, then? Was it a pre-dawn Scrabble emergency? Did she have some logarithmic wave functions that needed calculating a.s.a.p.?”

“We just slept together, Penelope. That’s all.” Reid rolls his eyes like the answer is obvious.

“Whoa!”

“Why are you looking at me like that? We slept together all the time when she was with the BAU. Well, you know… whenever either of us needed it. It’s not like it was ever a regular thing…”

“WHOA!” Garcia’s brain feels like it’s blown a bunch of fuses at once.

“Would you stop saying that?”

“You just told me that you’ve been sleeping with Emily _for years_ and no one knew. How am I supposed to react? And all these years I thought you were in denial…”

“Hold on. I mean we _sleep_ together. Literally sleep. You know, side by side. No sex, no funny business.”

Garcia slaps her forehead hard enough that it can probably be heard out in the hallway. “Oh, come _on!_ Seriously?!? Not once?”

“We both have nightmares.” Reid’s tone gets defensive. “We found that it was easier to relax if we were next to one another. If one of us woke up afraid, the other was there and it was just… better, ya know? She said that she’s been having a lot of trouble sleeping since she moved away and… It’s not like we all don’t have our coping mechanisms for this kinda stuff.”

Garcia arches an eyebrow at him in the dark.

“Please don’t make it seem weird, Penelope. We need it.”

“Honey, I’m sorry, but it’s weird. You have to start talking about how much you love that woman.”

“Of course I love her. She’s my friend.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about and you are too smart to be acting this dumb, so don’t.”

“I-it’s not like that.” Reid breathes out a wavery kind of sigh that breaks Garcia’s heart a little. “It’s never gonna be like that.”

“Well, no. Not if you don’t say anything about it. Eight years is a long time to court someone without their knowledge, Cyrano.”

“Please, Garcia,” Reid clears his throat and tries to do his tough guy impersonation that he’s copied from Derek. “Leave it be. She needs this and… I really need it too. That will just have to be enough.”

“ ‘Have to be enough’? It doesn’t _have_ to be anything… you can make it into-”

“ _No._ There’s nothing more - you got that? She lives in another country now, she has another life. I barely get to see her anymore… You will not ruin this for me, Garcia. Promise me… promise on our friendship that you will never breathe a word of this to her…”

Reid grips her arm tightly waiting for her promise, but she rests a hand over his and squeezes back. “But why, sweety? You know she loves you…”

“As a friend, Garcia. I’m not in her league - you and I both know that. I could spend my whole life chasing her and never comes close to catching up. I’ll take her friendship and consider myself fortunate, okay? It means that we can spend part of our time side by side, we can share some of ourselves with each other… Now, promise me you won’t say anything, no matter how many mimosas you have at brunch.”

“You know me so well, Dr. Killjoy.” Her mind is already scheming - she’s never been good at taking no for an answer - so she tells him exactly what he wants to hear. “All right. I promise that I won’t tell Emily that you love her even though the emotional hangover it’ll cause will force me to dress from the drab side of my closet for a week…”

“I appreciate the sacrifice, Penelope.” His lips brush her forehead in a quick peck.

“But that doesn’t mean that I’m giving up on you. You’re gonna get harassed, harangued, cajoled, debated, threatened, manipulated, wheedled, conned, inveigled, and sweet-talked within an inch of your genius limits because I don’t believe for one second that Emily is beyond your reach, and meddling is _what I do_. You brought a knife to a gunfight, understand? And this really isn’t a gunfight because I actually have a bazooka.”

“I have no idea what that means.” Reid hesitates.

“I know you don’t, honey, and that makes me a little bit sad, but trust me, you’ll thank me when you figure it all out. Now, off you go… out of the closet with you…” _I have a scheme to hatch…_

Garcia all but thrusts Reid back out into the hallway and watches as he scurries toward the elevators. She wonders if he knows whether he’s running away from her or from Emily.


	2. Chapter 2

“Oh, Garcia,” Emily tries hard to catch her breath in between bouts of cackling. “I’ve missed you.”

They’re well into the brunch booze and it’s making Prentiss rosy all over. Garcia focuses and notices that she seems less exhausted than she was when she first arrived in town. Well, at least Reid was right about that: Emily appears to benefit from what he can give her as much as he does. It’s still weird though.

“My league of squints and assorted nerds just don’t rate,” Prentiss continues, chuckling into her mimosa.

“How could they? I’m one of a kind.” Garcia winks.

“Yes, you are.”

“And as if any nerd could measure up to the Genius Goblin King of the Geeks…”

“Yeah,” Prentiss says warmly. “It’s not like I’ll ever find another Reid. It’s crazy how much I’ve missed those info dumps.”

“He’s happy you’re back to visit. It perked him right up, you can see it.” Garcia waves at their waiter and makes a hand gesture for two more drinks. Prentiss doesn’t object. “He’s had a rough year or so.”

“You mean Maeve.” Prentiss’s face is still rosy but her eyes have gotten serious. “Yeah, he doesn’t talk about her much with me.”

“He didn’t talk about her with anyone, really. Except Blake - she’s like a mother figure for him I guess. But Blake is a brick wall. I can’t get her to spill about anything, even though I’ve been worried for him something awful.”

“Hmmm. Maybe Blake is exactly who he needs right now.” Prentiss’s expression has become unreadable.

“Maybe. But if you were here, he’d have gone to you, no question.”

“I don’t know about _that_ , Garcia…” The waiter places a fresh drink in front of Prentiss and she takes a huge sip. Garcia hides her smile. “He was in love. That’s not something that you confide in a friend about.”

“Actually, that’s exactly the sorta stuff you tell your friends about.” But maybe not the sort of thing you take to someone you have unrequited feelings for. _Take a hint, Emily…_ “Do you guys talk much now? I mean, since you moved to London…”

“We email. Sometimes we call, but the time difference is a bit of a bitch.”

Garcia nods in sympathy and then watches a smile break out over Emily.

“He writes these letters. You know… longhand and full of weird little details? It’s sorta epic. Makes me feel like I’ve tumbled into some sort of Victorian intellectual debate or something.”

“Or an affair,” Garcia mumbles against her glass looking as innocent as possible.

“Pardon?”

“That’s funny, ya know,” Garcia continues without hesitation. “Diana Reid’s scholarly focus is fifteenth century romantic writing… poetry, odes, letter collections and all that jazz. Reid knows that stuff backwards and forwards. And I bet that’s why he’s always writing to his Mom because she appreciates the structure and care that goes into it. It’s very purposeful. I bet Reid writes the hell out of a letter…”

Prentiss doesn’t answer, just staring at Garcia instead.

“Do you write back?”

“Uh… no. I mostly email.”

“Too bad. As much as I love technology, there’s something wonderful about the idea of getting letters from someone… the anticipation, the feel of it in your hands, seeing all of those mistakes crossed out or knowing how the writer felt through the slant of the script, maybe some doodles in the margins… it’s very personal and secret… sorta romantic in a way, isn’t it?”

“Garcia, I think you’ve had too much champagne.” Prentiss looks a little lost now, like she’s not completely paying attention to Garcia’s ramblings.

“You can never have too much champagne, darling,” Garcia smirks. “I guess I’m just sentimental. And I worry about the good Doctor a lot so it makes me feel better that he’s still talking to you, even if it’s not about everything and in his own weird-ass way.”

“Is he okay, Garcia?” Prentiss leans forward, a worried V creasing her forehead.

Garcia waves her concern aside with a flapping hand. “I’m over sensitive about my chicks, you know that. I’m probably reading stuff into stuff.”

“What ‘stuff’? What have you seen?”

“Well… it’s just… he’s _alone_ , ya know? He’s lonelier than the rest of them and he keeps it all bottled up so no one feels bad for him. He’s such a good man and… I dunno, it really breaks my heart that he can’t be happy. I want a metric ton of nice things to get dumped on him - he totally deserves that.”

“You’re right,” Prentiss says distractedly. “He does deserve that.”

_Good, now why don’t you start figuring out a way to make that happen, honey…_

“So, wow, this conversation took a turn quickly, didn’t it?” Garcia breezes, pleased that she has successfully planted a seed without violating Reid’s silly promise. “When does your flight leave?”

“Not ‘til tonight.”

“Well, then I say it’s time for more mimosas and for you to dish about the handsome young blokes you may or may not be shagging across the pond.”

Garcia grins and pops her chin into her palm in anticipation. Prentiss just rolls her eyes, but Garcia can tell by the way the woman _isn’t_ blushing that there are no conquest stories coming, and that makes her feel pretty sure that she’s doing the right thing.


	3. Chapter 3

Garcia hustles out of her tech den already late for the morning briefing. She’ll catch an earful from Derek (but not Hotch because she has the fearless leader wrapped around her cookie-baking, pink-lacquered finger for all time) and thinking about a saucy comeback for her Honey Bear is probably why she doesn’t see Reid until it’s almost too late. She swerves at the last second to avoid crashing into him and manages to dump her files on the ground as she strains to save her tablet from the same fate. His eyes are down, staring at pages in his hand, and then he looks at her flailing in shock like she’s materialized out of thin air.

“Whoa… you okay, Garcia?”

“Honey…” She can’t help sounding exasperated as she tries to slow her heart rate and pick up her papers at the same time. “I’d be better if you were a little less like Helen Keller wandering around the office.”

Reid stoops to help with the papers, which turn out to be for him at the briefing anyway. “If I were Helen Keller I’d neither see this situation nor be able to initiate a conversation about it. And I’d be a useless profiler.”

“I fear that your irony impairment is approaching critical mass, Reid. One day you’re just gonna get all of the stuff you’ve missed over the years and explode from the massive ensuing facepalm.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“I know, dear,” Garcia sighs as she stands again and slaps his hard copy case file against his chest. “What’s got you so engrossed anyway?”

Reid juggles the papers as they walk towards the conference room. “Emily wrote me a letter.”

“Oh yeah?” Garcia brightens, thinking that it only took Prentiss a month to get around to it and that was faster than she thought. “That’s nice. A bit old school… you must like that.”

“I write her all the time, but she’s never written me back. Not until now, anyway.” He looks truly stunned. It’s so cute - she immediately forgives him for their little crash.

“So, what does she say?”

“All kinds of stuff, but it’s all detailed and strangely random at the same time. I wonder if she’s had a head injury…”

“Sweetheart, please stop profiling Emily’s letter and just decide to enjoy it instead. She most likely hasn’t conked herself on the noodle. She’s just considered your likes and dislikes, and decided to send you something you’d like. End of story.”

“I suppose that’s more likely, yes.”

Garcia chuckles because Reid doesn’t look wholly convinced that Emily hasn’t been body snatched or something. “Did getting the letter make you happy?”

“Yes, it did.”

“Well then, just _be happy_ about it and quit analyzing things.”

She stops just outside the conference room and turns quickly poking him in the chest with a finger. “And write her back.”

“Oh, I will.” Reid nods with great determination, like he’s just signed on to find the Higgs boson. Very serious work indeed. “I’ll do it on my lunch break and that way I can put it in the mail this evening.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Garcia shoves him through the doorway as he rereads Prentiss’s letter. “Tell her every little thing…”


	4. Chapter 4

She’s seeing the pattern emerge and its increased frequency is making her toes curl so hard that she’s probably at risk of breaking a phalanx or two. She watches Reid for ‘signs of the mail’, as she’s labeled it. (In fact, that’s what she’s called the spreadsheet she created charting out the dates and observations. She’s pretty sure that Reid would go red as a beet if he found out, but she also thinks that he might be pleased that she’s collecting data on the matter. She could do all sorts of sweet nerdy things with it, like pie charts of love or scatter graphs of emotional intensity… she could make a little Powerpoint presentation about their progress to show at their wedding… Aaaaand, whenever she finds herself too far gone with that sort of stuff she reminds herself that there is _still_ an ocean between them and they probably _still_ aren’t saying what they really mean to each other.)

Sometimes Reid tells her about the letters. He wanders into her office in the morning with the latest pages in hand describing how Emily solved her last case or outlining the specs of her insanely expensive flat. Garcia usually knows all of this because she calls Emily all the time and gets the same stories, but the look on Reid’s face as he peers at the pages tells Garcia that she’s only getting half of what Emily writes to him. Other times, Garcia just sees _that look_ on the genius’s face and assumes that the latest letter doesn’t meet his criteria for sharing. She’s sure that they’re still avoiding ‘the topic’, but they must be sharing more with each other nonetheless, and Garcia has to count that as a small win. 

So she keeps her eyes peeled for ‘the look’, and the creamy, thick envelopes that occasionally peek out of Reid’s bag, and the times that he eats lunch at his desk and spends most of it scribbling and ignoring his food. He smiles more and that makes everyone happier even if they can’t put their finger on it because no one seems to realize that Reid has become the barometer for the team’s ‘okayness’. Garcia notes it all down and after three months she sees it: they’ve gone from a letter every eight days to almost three letters per week. Maybe it’s time for another nudge.

She sneaks up on him at his desk one day and it turns out to be a baaaad idea because he’s so engrossed in what he’s doing that she scares the shit out of him and he spills coffee on a little sketch he’s working on. She dabs at the drawing while chanting a long stream of apologies, and then she stops when she recognizes who he’s drawn.

“Uh, is that Hotch?”

“Yeah.” Reid’s not happy about her getting a good look but he needs to dry the paper out before he can hide it away.

“I didn’t know you could draw…” The sketch is spidery and delicate, ink blurring at the corner where the coffee has liquefied it again. It’s deeply weird and strangely beautiful - like looking at the world through a kaleidoscope - and it strikes her that _of course_ Reid would draw what he sees that way.

“It’s private,” he mutters.

“Sorry, Reid. Truly.”

“No, I mean… it’s just something I do for myself. That’s why no one knows.”

“So, why are you drawing at work if it’s supposed to be private?”

“It’s for Emily. I didn’t have time to finish it last night and I want to post it with this letter today.”

“She asked for a picture of Hotch?”

“No. I’m doing portraits of the whole team for her - like a collection. I send them one by one as I finish them.”

Oh my God. This was so much better than doodles in the margins…

“Have you done me yet?” She’s grinning at how totally great Reid can be entirely by accident.

“No, I’m saving you for last. You’re very colorful.”

Garcia hugs him hard. She has to or she’ll cry a little and there is no crying at the FBI. “You’re so beautiful and precious, you should be guarded by monkeys. You have no idea…”

“Thanks, Garcia.” He’s too stiff to be enjoying the hug, but he squeezes her around the middle and it’s the next best thing. “That would make being a field agent pretty challenging though.”

“It doesn’t matter.” She squeezes him again and then sets him free. “ _Monkeys._ ”

“Okay,” he chuckles.

She stares for a moment, sinking down into all of the feels she’s getting from these two idiots, and then decides that she needs to document this latest detail in her spreadsheet. Her little nudge can wait a bit.

“Well, I’ll let you finish that,” she wiggles her fingers at the drawing. “You’re under a deadline, after all. And I won’t tell anyone about your private hobby - mum’s the word.”

“Thanks,” he blushes. “Would you like to see your portrait when it’s done? You know, before I mail it?”

“Oh, honey, _yes!_ I would be honored.”

“ ‘Kay.” He shrugs and then goes back to hunching over his ink-stained paper like she’s disappeared into a puff of smoke.

Garcia thinks that it’s time she collected some data from the other side of this equation.


	5. Chapter 5

“Jeez Louise!” Garcia gasps as she dumps her bags in Prentiss’s front hall and sees the entire wall of windows that looks out over London. “No wonder why you don’t wanna come home. Can you imagine what this view would cost in D.C.?”

“You don’t want to know what it costs here,” Prentiss grumbles behind her.

Emily sweeps Garcia through her flat, which is, frankly, much bigger than a single, working gal needs especially when it appears she has no social life. Her bags get shoved into a decent-sized guest bedroom and then they breeze past the master suite when Garcia stops and grabs Prentiss’s sleeve.

“What the hell is that?” she mumbles and points.

Prentiss looks and then smiles. “That’s an original poster for _Nosferatu The Vampyre_. Cool, right?”

“Umm, ‘cool’ wasn’t the first descriptor that came to mind… Creepy might supercede it. You know, because he’s all bald an’ evil an’…” Garcia makes grabby, clawing gestures with her fingers. “And it’s right over your bed.”

“Well, that’s where you find all the hot babes, Garcia. Gotta go where the action is, in a bloodsucking sense,” Prentiss smirks. “I know that Klaus Kinski wasn’t the best or sexiest vampire, but it’s not really about him. It’s the artwork - look at the way he’s holding her… it’s totally doomed but there’s tenderness in it, like he thinks she might save him or something.”

Garcia blinks. “And you decided to hang that statement _over your bed._ I’m no profiler but it’s not exactly a come-hither-you-sexy-beast welcome mat, is it?”

“Who says that I want anyone to ‘come hither’?” Prentiss blushes and looks embarrassed. “I’m too old for casual affairs and I’m too busy for anything else, Penelope. This flat is for _me_ \- it’s not some unconscious marketing tool for my social life.”

Garcia waits a second. _Struck a nerve there…_ “Okay, sure.”

“Besides, I like it. Reid sent it to me.”

 _That’s interesting._ “He did? Did he know you liked the movie?”

“I’d never seen it, actually. He sent this long letter about the romantic co-opting of horror movie elements - which he doesn’t approve of, by the way…”

“Naturally,” Garcia nods being very familiar with Reid’s views on the horror genre.

“Well, despite that, he went on and on about this specific movie poster and how it effectively blended the horror and attraction we have for monsters, and he made a pretty good argument for pointing to _it_ as the genesis of the vampire-as-a-romantic-figure transformation that made works by Rice, Kenyon, Hamilton, Baker, Ward, Coppola, and even _Twilight_ possible.”

“Huh.”

“Also, I think Reid has a thing for Isabelle Adjani.”

 _A beautiful woman with dark hair and great skin?_ “You don’t say.” Garcia nearly slaps her hand over her mouth when she realizes that was out loud. “It seems like you both read a lot of that stuff.”

“Not Reid, just me. Sometimes I can’t sleep.”

“So, you curl up with a horror novel under a picture of a monster in order to relax…”

Prentiss rolls her eyes. “Did you leave your sense of whimsy in the overhead bin, Penelope?”

“Even if I did, it seems that Reid more than fills the quota in my absence.” Garcia turns away with a smile as they both wander back into Prentiss’s living room. “So, I guess you guys talk more now, huh?”

“I started writing him letters and it has turned into a regular thing. It takes longer but he tends to say more. It’s a little closer to having him around again.”

The far off look that crosses Prentiss’s face makes Garcia’s heart ache a little but before she can press into it, it’s gone again. They walk past a side table against a wall and above it are Reid’s drawings of the team, mounted and framed like a cherished set. Garcia grabs Prentiss’s sleeve again to stop her.

“Oh! That’s us!” She does her best impression of complete shock as she leans forward and pretends that she’s never seen them before. Prentiss grins like a delighted child.

“Aren’t they great? Reid did them.”

“He did? I didn’t even know he could draw.”

“Yep. He’s been doing it for years. I caught him sketching a suspect once from behind a two-way mirror. He nearly dropped dead on the spot - it was hilarious.” She cackles.

“You’re evil. An evil, evil woman.” Garcia squints a little closer at the frames. “They’re kinda weird though.”

“They’re beautiful,” Prentiss corrects. “Like Egon Schiele crawled into the ductwork at the Behavioral Analysis building and took little snapshots of you all…”

“Yeah, now I don’t think the vampire bedroom poster is especially creepy. Creepy is just a day ending in ‘y’ for you, isn’t it?”

Prentiss wraps her arm around Garcia’s shoulder and squeezes her. “They are my favorite thing in this whole flat. It’s like having a part of you all here with me.”

_And Reid gave that to you. God, could these two be anymore in sync and in denial at the same time?_

Garcia stares at Emily’s portrait because it’s the only one, other than Reid’s own, that she hasn’t seen. It’s bigger than the others, and she’s decided _that_ subconscious tell is way too obvious to comment on so she leaves it alone. What strikes her most is that Reid drew her asleep; all of the others are standard, straight-on traditional portraits. The angle of it is strange - like he was sitting on the floor at a distance looking up at her. Her face is too full, her features compacted by perspective, her clothes seem out of proportion… But there is such vulnerability in it, such closeness between the subject and the viewer that the strange elements seem to become irrelevant. He’s used colour sparingly just like with the rest of the drawings, but he’s taken care to apply it _to her_ , not her outfit or her surroundings. There’s a delicate flush to her face, her lips have just the faintest hint of pink along them…

_Oh, Reid, maybe you haven’t been courting too subtly after all…_

Garcia leans back and sees that Prentiss is still staring at the frames, and still smiling as if nothing could ruin her joy. Garcia notes that Prentiss’s portrait and Reid’s are next to each other on the wall. And then some sort of spastic flail kicks in without permission and Garcia nearly goes and spills the beans about everything.

“Have you asked him to come visit you?”

“What?”

“Reid. Have you invited Reid to London yet?”

Prentiss looks flustered. “He knows he can come any time, just like the rest of you.”

“That’s not the same thing as being invited.”

“He wouldn’t come,” she sighs after a pause.

“Are you sure about that?”

“His schedule, my schedule, his twitchiness about traveling… there are lots of excuses.”

“But they’re just _excuses_ , Emily. They aren’t anything that you two couldn’t work around.” Garcia’s in real danger of breaking her promise to Reid so she decides to throw this whole moment into a hard reverse and cover her tracks with some of her traditional flightiness. “All I’m saying is that you should _ask_ , that’s it. You never know…”

She shrugs away and acts like something else in the flat’s caught her attention. Then she spins back to Prentiss.

“Hey, can we have beer? You know, that thick sludge that they serve at room temperature here? Ooooh! And darts… can we have too much beer and go somewhere to play darts with inebriated amateur rugby players and eat bangers an’ mash and sing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ in the street as we stumble home? Can we?”

She bounces on her heels and claps. Prentiss grins and shakes her head, but she grabs her coat anyway.

“In about two hours your jetlag will kick in and I’ll have to carry you home like a drunk sorority pledge on frosh week. But we can have beer and darts if you want. If rugby players show up though, yer on yer own.”

“Deal! I’m determined to have my own version of a British buddy movie while I’m here, even if it kills me.”

“And what if it kills me instead?” Prentiss laughs as she locks the door.

_I’ll have a lot of explaining to do to Reid when I get back stateside, I guess._


	6. Chapter 6

“Ugh! Where can I put this, honey? Those stairs did me in and I think my arms are about to give up too…”

Reid hadn’t told her that the elevator in his building didn’t work when he asked if she could give him a lift to Ikea. She doesn’t care if it’s all do-it-yourself fabulous and made of balsam wood and wishful thinking - the boxed shelving unit she’s just dragged up four flights of stairs has won itself a place on her nemesis list, and Reid might follow if he doesn’t get his act together soon.

“Reid??”

“Uhhh… put it in the bedroom, please.” She can’t see him behind the teetering pile of boxes he’s trying to balance while flinging a foot out to swing the door shut. “Second door on your right, Garcia.”

She lugs the shelves resentfully into the appropriate location and then hears a loud crash and muffled swearing coming from the living room. At that moment she decides that Reid can stay off the list for now and hopefully he’s learned his lesson about this. She shoves the box into a corner against the wall - there’s _no way_ she’s staying to help build it - and wipes her brow while she catches her breath. Oh yeah, and she peers around the room because there’s no telling if she’ll ever get another legitimate excuse to scope out Reid’s love den again.

It’s, unsurprisingly, pragmatic and literally stuffed to the rafters with books. No well-thumbed historical pornography or smutty manga books or even a slightly racy poster of Wonder Woman in sight. The drawers of his nightstand probably contain mismatched socks and college-ruled notebooks. The place looks like he’s expecting his mother to drop by at any moment - even the bed is pristine. _Boooriiiing._

She huffs and turns to leave when she sees it propped on top of his antique wardrobe. He’d have a perfect view of it from the bed…

“Hey… umm, Reid?”

There’s more thumping from the living room but he eventually gets there, face pink with exertion.

“What? You need some help?”

Garcia points to the large, framed drawing on the dresser. “Is that an Egon Schiele?”

He grins. “Yeah, it is. Are you a fan?”

She isn’t. Or more exactly, she wasn’t until Prentiss dropped the name and she did some Googling. Now it’s like the guy is burned into her retinas - she’d recognize him anywhere.

“Sorta.”

“He’s my favorite,” Reid beams as he crosses his arms over his chest with pride.

“Is that a print?” Reid doesn’t seem like a guy who can afford art.

“Nope, it’s an original. Emily got it for me. It’s kinda great, don’t you think? I dunno where she found the time to hunt it down…”

 _Daaaaamn. Miss P. is upping her game…_ It’s a drawing of two, half-naked lovers trying to untangle themselves from their clothes. Their faces are hidden as they get stuck with their shirts over their heads, tied around their spidery arms. But their lips peek through - his and hers - flushed with urgency and frustration that’s more naked than their bare chests pressed together as if glued. It’s basically unbounded eroticism, like all of Schiele’s work that Garcia has seen. You can almost _hear_ their ragged breathing, their terrible ache leaking through in inarticulate whimpers. And Prentiss _gave_ him that, and he hung it in his bedroom. Garcia nearly turns to Reid and screams ‘Oh, come on already!’ Instead, she just stares at him.

“What?” His smile dims a little. She cocks an eyebrow at him - after all, she doesn’t have to pretend that she doesn’t know how he feels. “Don’t start again, Garcia. It’s just a gift.”

“A gift of _erotica!_ ”

“It’s _art_ ,” he snips. “By my favorite artist, which she knows from our years of _friendship_.”

“Okay, I’m not gonna even TOUCH the fact that your favorite artist basically made a career out of drawing _really nice porn_ … not gonna dive into what that says about you…”

Reid looks shocked, like he’s never considered that himself either.

“But I’m telling you right now, Baby Boo, I would never give you something like this no matter how much I knew you’d love it because _friends don’t give those sorts of gifts to each other._ That,” she waves her hand in the direction of the drawing. “Is intimate. Do you understand? It’s a message.”

Reid’s mouth opens and closes as his hands start twitching and he rocks as if he’d like nothing better than to flee. Except this is his place, and it seems that asking her to leave instead would make him more uncomfortable. It’d be hilarious if it weren’t so sad.

“It’s n-not… She’s just… T-there’s nothing in this-”

“Oh yeah?” Garcia is losing her benevolent sense of calm with him. She hates that. “You know that vampire movie poster you sent her?”

Reid nods.

“Guess where she hung it? Go on… guess.”

Reid waits clearly thinking his ignorance on the subject speaks for itself.

“She put it over her bed.” She lets that settle over him. “And then, she went out and found _that_ , sent it to you, and YOU hung it in YOUR bedroom. This is one of those ridiculously easy connect-the-dots scenarios that you never imagine happening to real people.”

“H-how do you know w-where she hung the poster?”

“ ‘Cause I saw it, genius. When I went to visit her two months back. She told me all about why you sent it to her and the things you said about vampires and horror films and romantic figures. She told me how she reads when she can’t sleep and that she finds the poster comforting… She went on and on.”

Now Reid looks like he’s going to pass out.

“Honey,” she grabs him by his arms and shakes him a little. “This isn’t wishful thinking on my part - there’s something there with her, I’m telling you. But neither one of you will ever figure out what it is at this rate. You _gotta_ take a leap, Spencer. Go to London… go see her.”

“W-we’re friends,” he breathes and doesn’t look at her. “I need that…”

“Spencer Reid, I am _this close_ to breaking my promise to you.” She holds her thumb and forefinger three inches apart in front of his face, and then she squeezes them closer together. “Maybe _this close_ …”

“Garcia…” he growls.

“Has she invited you to London?” _She better have._

“Yes. More than once.”

“Then go. Don’t think, just GO.”

“But what if-”

She grabs his chin and pulls him closer. “What did I just say about thinking?”

“I’m not sure that I’m wild about this new bossy streak, Penelope, despite my thankfulness for your mini van and your savant ability to efficiently navigate Ikea’s labyrinthine store layouts,” he mumbles, and she gives him points for spunkiness.

“It all adds to my fla-va.” She wiggles his chin and then gives him a wink.

“Hmmm. Well… I love that you care so much but… I need to get to a decision about this at my own speed, I think.”

“ _Will_ you make a decision about it, sweety? ‘Cause it’s been eight years already.”

“I will, Garcia. I promise.” 

He smirks bashfully and she can’t help but believe him. Perhaps he’s finally learned his lesson about this too.


	7. Chapter 7

Garcia’s phone vibrates just as she’s about to enter the hospital. She considers ignoring whoever it is, and then she sees the number and swerves away from the automatic doors and makes a beeline for a bench outside instead.

“Hey, Em-” she starts but Prentiss seems to be halfway through the conversation already.

“…been chasing some asshole through the Hindu Kush for five days and it’s like going to Mars because _nothing_ works there and I get back to Peshawar and my phone blows up with all of these messages and it took forever to sort through them and then I saw yours and then a couple from J.J. and… Christ! _They are thirty-six hours old and-_ ”

“Emily!” Garcia doesn’t want to shout at her because she already sounds like she’s having a panic attack and Garcia’s not sure what the medical services are like in Pakistan, but she needs to be reined in a little. “He’s okay.”

The silence stretches out long enough for Garcia to wonder if they’ve been disconnected. “Emily? Did you hear me?”

“He’s okay? Really?” Prentiss sounds so lost that Garcia finds another gear in her caretaking mode. Miss P. can’t afford to be vulnerable whilst hunting terrorists or whatever.

“He will be. I mean, he got shot in the neck and it’s serious, but he’ll be fine. I saw him last night and he was sitting up and talking and everything.”

“Okay. He’s okay…”

“And we got the guy who showed up at the hospital to finish the job, so there’s no need to worry about that either.”

“Wait… the UnSub came to the hospital? You mean for treatment? Who shot him?”

“No one shot him. Well, not until I did anyway…”

“WHAT?”

“Emily, I need you to be calm, honey.” So much for reining her in…

“Tell me what happened right now, Garcia.”

“Their were a bunch of dirty cops involved and one posed as a nurse and tried to give Reid a dose of carbenicillin while I was visiting with him-”

“But Reid is allergic to carbenicillin!”

“I know. He said that to the guy and that’s when things got hinky. Reid ripped out his i.v. to stop the guy and that’s when we saw the gun tucked in his pants-”

“GUN?”

“Yeah, and Reid’s weapon was on the table beside me in his personal effects bag and I took it and shot the s.o.b.” Garcia shivers as the smell and the sound and the kick of Reid’s gun comes back to her like she’s doing it again. “It was so loud. I don’t know how you guys ever get used to that…”

“Penelope, are _you_ all right?” Now Prentiss sounds she’s gonna go all cheetah-momma on everyone and race across continents to take down whichever asshole at the watering hole pisses her off first. It’s a better sound than ‘lost’.

“Yeah, sweety, I am. I’m gonna spend some time talking to my Honey Bear about this, and probably donate too much of my salary to the anti-gun lobby, but I’ll be fine. And Reid’s gonna be fine too. Stand down, okay?”

“I can’t ‘stand down’, Garcia. Reid got shot, you had to shoot someone… you both could’ve died-”

“And there’s nothing you can do about any of that mess now, Emily. Though you’re the first person to bring a smile to my face in nearly twenty-four hours, so thanks for that, hon.” Garcia tries not to cry because she doesn’t want Prentiss to hear it. She wants Prentiss to be an angry, fucking cheetah. But then she remembers another piece of news and wonders how the cheetah will react to it. “You should know that Blake’s gone.”

There’s another painful pause. “Blake died?”

“No… oh God, no sweety. I mean that she’s quit the Bureau. It’s not official yet but Hotch told me that she resigned right after Reid’s shooting. Something about she having had a son once who died and he would’ve been Reid’s age now, I guess, and it all hit too close to home and Baby Genius was shielding her when he took the hit… well, she’s just _gone_ and who can blame her really.” 

The cell signal is just awful and Prentiss falls away again into the cone of silence for ages. Then, “Does Reid know yet?”

“Probably not.” _He’s alone again. He needs you, darling…_

There’s a bunch of clicks and static and then Momma Cheetah is back. “I can’t get a flight outta here for another twelve fucking hours. God-forsaken, technology-barren, impotent piece of sh-”

Garcia wonders what corner of hell she’s destined for that she suddenly feels so happy after the day’s events. “He’s being discharged now. That’s where I am - to pick him up. But he’ll be home for at least a week before Hotch even allows him back into the building.”

“Keep him out of trouble ‘til I get there.”

“I’ll do what I can, but also, he’s refused painkillers just like always. Which means he’ll be cranky like _whoa_ by the time you arrive.”

Prentiss snorts in a knowing way that makes Garcia inexplicably sentimental. “What else is new? Just sit him down with his _Doctor Who_ DVDs and tell him to shut up.”

“You got it, mamacita. See you soon.” 

Garcia hangs up and tries not to feel _too much_ hope that this horrifyingly craptastic experience might have a microscopic silver lining to it. Yeah… she’s going straight to hell…


	8. Chapter 8

It’s two weeks before Reid’s allowed back into the Bureau, and then he immediately gets chained to a desk, which suggests Hotch was shaken by the kid’s shooting more than he let on. It sucks for Boy Wonder but it means when the team is out of town on a case that Garcia has someone to hang out with at the office. 

Not that he’s great company: he’s been wandering around with an attitude that you could slice yourself on. Just before Prentiss went back to London, she dropped by the unit in a similar mood. At the time, Garcia pressed her and only got a ‘leave it alone’ for her trouble, but Prentiss also gave her an open-ended plane ticket that’s been burning a hole in her desk drawer ever since. She looks at Reid frowning while they do a social media analysis of the victims in their latest case, and she decides that she’s been patient with this crap long enough.

“What’s up with you?”

Reid turns like she’s yelled at him.

“Seriously,” she pushes on. “You’ve been angrier than a wet cat for days now. What gives?”

“It’s nothing.” He slouches back to stare at the screens.

“Reid…”

“Garcia, stop.”

“Listen, I get that you were shot and that was frightening and you’re probably still in some pain. And then Hotch took you out of the field. None of that is designed to make you happy, but for a guy who’s just had some much needed time off and who got to spend it with a friend, you-”

“I said stop it, Garcia.”

“What’s the matter? Did you two fight or something?”

He doesn’t say anything, just taps through Facebook postings with a huff.

“It musta been a doozy ‘cause she was none too happy when she came to see me before her flight home…”

That catches his attention. “She seemed upset?”

“Sorta. I tried to find out but she just shut me down. What did you do?”

His mouth tightens and he looks away again. Her mind launches all sorts of possibilities at her: maybe he finally told her how he felt, maybe she acted like an idiot about it, maybe she finally saw the disturbing breadth of his action figure collection… Then she realizes that she hasn’t seen him with a letter in nearly two weeks.

“Have you written her since she went back?”

He shakes is head fractionally.

“Has she written to you?”

He looks at his shoes.

“What did you do?!?”

“I didn’t do anything,” he snaps. “It’s what she did.”

“Well, what did _she_ do? Spit it out already!”

He swivels and glares at her. “She treated me like a mentally retarded child. Like I was an invalid or something! She acted like I was gonna dive under the sofa at the least little obstacle I encountered and she tiptoed around _everything_. It’s like… I don’t know… as if she had no memory of me from the past eight years at all - like she doesn’t understand me. It got to be that I could barely stand being in the same room with her. All she wanted to do was molly coddle me. It was mortifying. All I’ve ever wanted was to matter to her, for her to _see_ me… but all she saw was some helpless, fragile burden and she spent all of her time making sure I didn’t bump into the furniture. You shoulda witnessed the performance she put on when she told me about Blake… as if I couldn’t piece that together for myself.”

“Oh my God, are you REALLY that dense?” Garcia thinks that the question could be posed to both of them equally.

“What do you mean?”

“She acted like you needed to be wrapped in cotton wool because hearing that you’d been shot while she was _seven thousand miles away_ turned her into a terrified mess, dumbass. SHE was the one likely to dive under the sofa.”

“Well then, why didn’t she just say that?!?”

“You mean because you two have _always_ been so forthcoming about yer damned feelings, right?” 

Garcia leans forward and gets right in his face. He’s not prepared for her irritation and wheels his chair back in surprise. 

“Reid, how dare you get angry at her for trying to compensate for a trauma that she can’t wrap her head around? She didn’t have to come to you, and she sure as hell didn’t have to stick around once you decided to get annoyed with her. She did all of that because you _mean_ a lot to her and, yeah, maybe she could’ve handled it better but we’ve all tried to do things that we could’ve been better at. Failing with that isn’t a federal crime. When is enough gonna be enough for you two, huh? When are you gonna stop playing this game and just be _honest_ with each other?”

Reid’s eyes are as wide as saucers and his mouth is hanging open to complete the picture. Yeah, maybe dial back the ferocity a tad, Penelope…

“Listen,” she sighs and holds out her hands in surrender. “You really, really, really scared her, just like how you’d probably freak out if you heard that she got shot on a case.”

Is it possible that his stare could get any bigger? Well, he’s trying hard…

“That sort of reaction can only be triggered by love, Reid. Maybe she was trying to show you that and it got all twisted around because, you know, it appears that neither of you is any good at this.”

“Oh,” he whispers. “Shit.”

Did he just swear?!? Oh wow… all of the pigeons were coming home to roost now.

“Well, maybe I should write her an-”

“No. No more letters. No more hiding behind stuff.” Garcia roots around in her desk drawer and yanks out the ticket. She never really thought it was intended for her in the first place. “Go see her, Reid. Now. Today.”

“But we’re on a case. I just got back from sick leave and Hotch can’t approve anything while he’s awa-”

“No more excuses, honey. How did you feel the moment she showed up at your place? The very first thing you felt when you opened the door and saw her…”

“I-I felt like I’d collapse from relief.”

Garcia slaps the ticket onto her desk and shoots it across to him. “Go to London and tell her that. Then ask her how she felt.”

Reid picks up the ticket and stares at it as if he’s waiting for it to give him instructions as well. Then he slowly stands and fetches his bag.

“This could be a disaster in the making,” he swallows awkwardly.

“Nah.” Garcia waves the suggestion off. “Maybe apologize for being a bit of a dick as well. You’ll be fine.”

“Okay.” He really doesn’t seem convinced, but he’s walking - that’s a start. Then he stops and turns back to her. “Garcia, should I apologize _to you_ for being a dick too?”

“Hit me with that when you get back, Lover Boy,” she smiles.


	9. Chapter 9

He’s back eight days later looking taller, fuller, just _more_ somehow and when his eyes find hers in their first case update meeting, he gives her a great smile. She wants to ask but they’re immediately tossed into a new case. The fading hickey on his neck is a strong indicator of success though.

A few days afterwards, she corners him in the kitchen and plies him with wiggling eyebrows and a tacit threat to just ask Prentiss directly. He rolls his eyes and relents, but that smile is back again.

“It went well, Garcia. Really well.”

She squeals and does a little pirouette even though he’s told her next to nothing; she’s gonna need more details to be fully convinced. He laughs while he stirs his coffee and razzes her about her hysterical enthusiasm, and then he falls silent and goes far away for a while. She stands there and watches his joy dim and she wonders what she did to bring him down.

“What’s wrong, Sugar Plum?”

“Nothing,” he shakes his head. “It was everything I hoped for.”

“But… what?”

“It was… the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” he says after a long pause. “But not much has actually changed.”

“What do you mean, honey? Because if you guys are talking about it, and _doing stuff_ about it,” she smirks at him and he goes pink. “Then I think a lot has changed.”

“Well, sure, stuff has changed but… there’s still an ocean between us, Penelope. We still have two incompatible jobs and lives that just won’t come together no matter how much we rearrange the pieces.”

His expression falls into sadness so quickly it ought to leave skid marks and her heart starts thumping out big, wet beats for him.

“Spencer…”

“The worst part of it is…” he whispers after another heart-wrenching silence. “The worst part is that, now I’ve had her, I can’t go on without her. I didn’t know that there was a place _beyond_ longing for her, but that’s where I am now. And I can’t go forward or back. I won’t…”

He stops and swallows, as if he’s trying to arrange his distress in a proper manner.

"So… the question becomes…” He looks at her and Garcia sees Emily written all over him, stitched into every wrinkle, woven under his skin. It literally takes her breath away and she wonders if he’s ever shown this to Emily. “The question is… when the material obstacles remain unchanged, what do I do now?”

Garcia makes a painful sound and then rushes forward to cover it up. She sweeps him into a hug and perhaps for the first time ever he melts into it. That alone would break her on an average day, but on top of all of this? Well, she’s done for. He squeezes her like he’s never going to see her again.

“What do I do now, Penelope?” he sighs wetly into her shoulder.


	10. Chapter 10

They appear to go on as before. Emily doesn’t let on anything in her calls to Garcia (that’s gotta violate some girlfriend code, right?) but, of course, she knows the broad strokes of what’s happening from Reid who clearly doesn’t see the point in lying to her about it anymore. He tells her more about their letters, which have started coming almost every other day now, and there’s such a mix of pleasure and futility in him when he talks about them that Garcia sorta hates herself a little for pushing so hard. She didn’t think it would blow up like this when she schemed her little scheme in that linen closet at the George Hotel.

Garcia sets Reid up with a Skype account and shows his Luddite butt how to use it, and his mood improves a little. Letters are great (he’s read a few of them out to her before he sends them and, daaaaaaamn, that nerd gives good letter) but Garcia assumes that they need to see one another now that they’ve experienced each other in their birthday suits. Well, she _hopes_ that there’s some video nooky happening, at any rate. Knowing Reid, they might just be spending their time playing chess or talking about movies…

Still, there’s no missing that Reid’s become privately miserable and that’s more or less Garcia’s doing and she has no idea how to fix it. Perhaps she naïvely thought that they’d work it out themselves after the first mutual orgasm/declaration/whatever, but really, it took them eight years and an Asgardian-sized crowbar to get them there, so who was she kidding? It’s up to her to find a way out of this and, if she’s successful at it, she’s gonna deserve the mother of all vacations afterwards because this is so much more work than she thought it would be.

Prentiss gets assigned to some sort of UN advisory board for combating international terrorism, or something equally scary, and makes a series of trips to New York as a result. Whenever she’s in town, Reid positively glows with happiness and then disappears for a weekend. But when he comes back, the sadness follows him and the shadows under his eyes get darker and Morgan starts commenting that he’s creating his own weather system at his desk what with the gloom that’s lurking over him. Hotch and J.J. start sharing worried looks as the unit’s unofficial barometer begins teetering the wrong way again. _Again._ Garcia can’t believe what a mess this has become.

A few months pass like this and Garcia starts to realize that Prentiss has been making some secret trips to D.C. after her UN gig dries up. Reid doesn’t mention them, but his mood fluctuations sorta tip her off and they happen so quickly that there’s no time for him to have traveled anywhere. Plus, one day he just shows up in the same clothes he wore the day before so… he’s getting a bit sloppy. She pulls him aside and decides that she has to butt back into this, past results be damned, if there’s any hope of recovery.

“Honey, I know the long distance thing sucks but you’ve gotta start being more optimistic about this.” She pulls him into her tech den and shuts the door. “It’s been a couple of months now and neither of you have given up on it - that’s a good sign.”

“I don’t know what kind of sign it is, Garcia,” he sags against the wall. “For my part, I have no choice in the matter.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that it’s like the friendship thing all over again. I’ll take whatever she’s offering to me, just like before, regardless of how it makes me feel. You know how this works, you know how I feel about her.”

“Maybe that’s the problem, sweety. Does she know how you feel about her? I mean, really… have you said the words?”

“She leaves without saying goodbye, Garcia,” his voice and stare harden. “Sometimes she leaves in the middle of the night - no note, no nothing - like she’s running away from something awful. Other times she gets all cold and distant, and I swear to God it feels like she pities me. Then, a few days later I’ll get a letter telling me she’s sorry, she didn’t mean it, and she can’t wait to see me again - and I start to hope. We just keep doing that over and over.”

It shocks Garcia because that doesn’t sound like Prentiss at all, or rather it sounds like the protective Prentiss ‘suit’ that she projects to the world in order to keep things manageable. She can’t for the life of her figure out why Prentiss would do that to Reid though. 

“I can’t pour out my heart to _that_ ,” Reid finishes impotently.

Garcia huffs, at a loss and a little ashamed of her girlfriend, and then she squeezes Reid’s arm in sympathy. “There’s gotta be a reason, Spencer. She’s not like that - we both know it.”

“Does the reason matter? She still does it. She can’t be blind to how it makes me feel.”

He has a point and Garcia really doesn’t have a comeback to counter it. Instead, she promises him that she’ll do a little digging about it, and Reid just rolls his eyes tiredly and walks out of her office. 

Three weeks later Prentiss officially comes to D.C. to liaise with the Bureau on a case. Garcia watches Prentiss and Reid as they work around each other in the bullpen. It’s a bit like old times with the snarky banter and the easy give-and-take, but there’s also this tension that snaps between them. They seem more irritable when they’re separated.

There’s a moment when the task force is delivering the profile to DCPD officers - they are standing in a line, Prentiss at one end and Reid at the other, rhyming off profile elements with dead-eyed accuracy. They each watch while the other talks and it _feels_ like their hands are invisibly reaching out to grab at one another and keep them close even at a distance while pretending to be colleagues. Garcia watches it happen and gets steamed because there’s no way - NO WAY - that Prentiss can give off that kinda vibe and not mean it. Whatever she’s playing at, it stops here, Garcia vows. The woman needs to get off the merry-go-round and make a decision. Reid already has.

The officers scatter and Garcia marches over to where Prentiss is but Morgan head’s her off at the pass and sabotages her sabotage. 

“It’s good to have you back, Prentiss,” he grins. “Gets the old juices flowing, ya know?”

Prentiss makes a face. “Ummm, gross but …thanks, I guess? It feels good to be back but it’s unfortunate that it’s for a case.”

“Yeah,” Morgan nods in understanding.

“Maybe you should start visiting for better reasons,” Garcia stares at her and lets her know that she’s making a point. Reid is a few feet away packing up his bag and he looks on with concerned interest. Maybe he thinks Garcia is gonna tell Prentiss everything straight out and in front of Morgan.

“I get over here whenever I can,” Prentiss’s voice is cautious, a bit edgy. “I’ve got an office to run.”

“Yeah, Baby Girl,” Morgan looks upset. “It’s not like London is a convenient commute.”

“Sure, I understand that. But maybe there’s nothing practical about how much we miss her.” Garcia looks to Morgan and then to Prentiss again. “Love is completely unreasonable and there are people here who love you very much. Maybe it’s unreasonable of _you_ to expect us to be reasonable about missing you.”

“That last sentence made me dizzy, Garcia,” Morgan grumbles. Prentiss just stares at her. Reid walks up with a fake smile plastered to his face.

“Ready to go? We gotta be at the motor pool in ten.”

“Yeah, let’s do this,” Prentiss mumbles and it’s not lost on anyone that Garcia just threw her off her game.

Morgan and Prentiss head off, Morgan shooting Garcia a ‘what gives’ look over his shoulder. Reid grabs her elbow and pulls her attention back to him.

“Stop it.”

“Stop what?”

He sighs quietly. “Don’t ruin everything.”

“You deserve better than what you’re getting and you both know it. I’m just letting her know that _I know_.”

His stare goes cold. “I’ve gotta go.”

“Be safe.”

“Yeah, yeah…” He waves a dismissive hand over his shoulder and is gone.

When they return there are three suspects in custody and some illicit booze being passed around their huddle of desks in the bullpen. Folks are laughing at bad Rossi jokes and they’re generally bleeding off the manic energy that comes with the job. Garcia has bled off her anger too and feels crappy about what she did to both Prentiss and Reid right before a field op, and she drinks up so that she can go and offer them an apology. 

They’re sitting together at the edge of the group, which gives them a small amount of privacy. Prentiss is laughing along with the others; Reid is wearing a strange smile. Their palms are on the desk behind them, arms bracing their weight. Prentiss brushes Reid’s hand as she fidgets, Reid leans back until their arms press together and then he looks at her - open, earnest, unashamed. It just breaks your heart. And then Prentiss looks back at him and it’s the same, damned look that he’s giving her and Garcia just _doesn’t understand_ what is happening between them at all because that look tells her that things should be easier for them than they are. Reid smiles and then catches Garcia staring and silently tells her what he did earlier: _Don’t ruin this._

Garcia huffs and sets her Dixie cup down on a desk before storming off to her tech den. The anger’s back and she’s not good at angry - it makes her skin itch. Frankly, she doesn’t know how much more of this she can stand by and watch, and she wishes that she loved them both less. That would make it easier to walk away and not feel responsible for how it turns out. But she’s pretty sure neither of those things will happen.


	11. Chapter 11

It’s you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me early and also inexplicably foggy as Garcia waits outside Reid’s building. God knows why she always finds herself sorta stalking her buddy this way but she’s not gonna investigate that too closely and instead just files the whole thing under ‘it’s for his own good’. She can’t stand it anymore and she’s going to go to Prentiss with his secret, even if it costs her his friendship. But she wants to give him the head’s up first because a) he deserves it, and b) it might light the fire under his genius rump that he needs to fix this before it all goes ‘past tense’ on him forever. So, she’s lurking in the pre-dawn, foggy gloom feeling like an Arthur Conan Doyle character (and wouldn’t Reid love that) trying to decide whether she should continue waiting or just go up and ring his buzzer, when the front door opens and Prentiss steps out looking around suspiciously and wearing the same clothes as yesterday.

Garcia abandons all subtly and goes for broke as she hustles across the street to Reid’s walk-up. “Where are you going, Missy?”

“G-Garcia? What are you doing here? It’s six a.m.”

“I’m not gonna ask what _you’re_ doing here. Did you say goodbye to him at least?”

Prentiss just stares. She looks tired, but not in a bouncy, sexy-funtimes kinda way. It’s the kind of tired that Garcia’s seen on the faces of dozens of cops over the years; the kind of tired that comes from getting accustomed to loss. And that just won’t stand because there’s no reason - to Garcia’s thinking anyway - that these two can’t have one another. What’s it gonna take? A directive from on high?

“What are you _doing_ , Emily?”

Prentiss looks down at her shoes and Garcia thinks that maybe she’ll freeze her out of any further conversation on this matter, and then she lets out a wet sigh and drops down to sit on the stoop, leaning her head into her hands instead. It’s like watching a house get bulldozed and suddenly Garcia’s on the stoop next to her friend trying to save the foundation. 

“I can’t stop,” she hitches, her face still hidden in her hands.

“Can’t stop what, Blackbird?” Garcia wraps an arm around her shoulder.

“I can’t stop the needing. And then the running away.” Prentiss looks at Garcia and she’s a phrase away from having a full-blown, Julia Roberts-level emotional meltdown. 

“Then stop running,” Garcia whispers. “Where do you imagine is safer for you than here, with him?”

“I don’t know, Penelope. I just always leave… it’s who I am. My stint with the BAU was the longest commitment I’ve ever made to anyone or anything.”

“And he was there with you the whole time. Doesn’t that count?”

“Of course it counts.” Prentiss’s meltdown recedes in the face of her unflinching loyalty. That’s something at least, but the amount of emotional tangle inside this woman’s head is frankly staggering. “You guys are like family to me, but I still left you, didn’t I? I walk away from the people I care about.”

“Well, if that’s the case, be the brave one here. Make this the last time you walk away from him.” Garcia decides to play hardball. If they are both too ~~stupid~~ stubborn to make this work, she’s gonna protect Reid because he won’t understand this… he won’t bounce back from it like Prentiss will. “No more relying on him to bolster you, no more blurry friendship boundaries… he deserves all the good things, remember? No more litigating your personality disorders in his bed.”

“Garcia,” Prentiss whispers looking completely devastated.

“I’m sorry for being so cruel, Emily. You know I love you like the sister I’ve never had, but what you’re doing to him might qualify as some low-grade, CIA torture crap and I’m going all WikiLeaks on your ass now. You either take what he’s offering you - and has been offering to you for _eight years_ \- or you get the hell outta town and stay out.”

Garcia expects a fight: the old Prentiss sang froid would pull a knife on her and they’d start dancing about this. Garcia is wily when she wants to be but she’s under no illusions that she could beat Prentiss if the woman were pushed into a corner fighting for something she felt she had a right to. So, when Prentiss just looks away, resigned, and doesn’t even try to defend herself, Garcia’s heart truly bleeds for her.

“How long have you known, Penelope?”

“That he loves you? Oh, like, forever,” she huffs and leans against Prentiss, getting a little resigned herself. She really thought they’d make it…

“He must hate me for this,” Prentiss whispers, swallowing hard.

“I don’t hate you.”

Garcia actually yelps at the sound of his voice and it reverberates off the buildings in the empty street. Both she and Prentiss turn to find Reid standing just outside his front door looking sleepy and rumpled.

“Hello, people,” he says quietly giving them both a little wave in the process. He looks terribly sad but also completely unsurprised and Garcia just wants to scream because she was trying to _fix_ that, not pile onto it.

“It’s not even six yet. What are you doing up?”

He raises his hand holding The Washington Post. “Just getting the paper.”

Prentiss stands quickly and looks at him like she’s about to confess that she killed his dog or something. “I was running away again.”

“Oh,” is all he says. _Oh? OH???_

“Garcia stopped me.”

“I see.”

Prentiss’s mouth thins to a tight line like she’s angry at his refusal to be offended. Garcia is offended on his behalf but mostly she’s just holding her breath to see how this all plays out.

“Why have _you_ never stopped me, Spencer?”

“Was I supposed to? Would it have made you care more for me if I somehow compelled you to stay against your will?”

“No, of course not,” Prentiss bites out. “But… why won’t you fight? Why aren’t you pissed off with me?”

“There’s nothing to be gained by either of those responses. I know you well enough to recognize when fighting with you would be pointless, and fighting about _this_ is pointless. As for being pissed off, well, that’s about anger and I told you that I don’t hate you.”

“You must feel something about this, Spence!” Prentiss’s voice rings off the buildings and it snaps his sad gaze to her.

“Pain. I never imagined that you’d hurt me this badly. Or that I’d let you.”

Prentiss makes a sobbing sound but her eyes stay dry. “Then why not tell me to go to hell? Why not refuse to let me come back?!”

“I can’t do that. I love you.” 

Reid shrugs his shoulders like he’s talking about a mathematical constant. Garcia’s heart squeezes so tightly that she makes a little involuntary ‘Oh!’ sound and then claps her hand over her mouth. Reid looks at her and blushes probably having forgotten that she is there, and she mouths the word ‘sorry’ like it’s the toll she has to pay in order to remain sitting on the steps beneath them. Reid shrugs again and looks back to Prentiss.

“That’s a done deal for me, Emily. A _lifetime_ deal… I don’t know how to get out of it even if I wanted to. I would’ve done it years ago if I had the slightest clue…”

Prentiss grabs a handful of his wrinkled t-shirt, the section right over his heart, and tugs like she wants to shake some sense into him but she’s all out of gas. Then she folds like a bad hand of poker.

“You can’t love me like that,” she gasps.

“Why not?”

“Because I’m not worth it.”

Garcia’s voice acts like a gag reflex at that, spitting out ‘Oh, give me a break’ before she can stop herself. Prentiss glares down at her but Reid follows it up with ‘You have no idea what you’re worth to me’ and suddenly both women are staring at him in awe.

“You don’t,” he reaffirms quietly after a heartbeat. “But you should. After eight years of friendship and comfort, after all of those sleepless nights spent sitting up and talking our demons away, after letting you go when you needed it and letting you back in because I’d rather have _something_ of you rather than nothing at all, after…”

Reid stops when his voice gives out but then he clears it and comes back like the secret champion Garcia’s always thought he was.

“After discovering that you need all of that from me as well, you should _know_ what you’re worth to me, Emily. There’s no excuse not to.”

 _Atta boy, Spencer._ Garcia’s cheering inside her head while trying to prevent the steady flow of her mascara from her face to her shoes. If they don’t wrap this up soon, she’ll look like a raccoon. 

Prentiss grabs Reid by the back of the neck and pulls him in for an intense kiss. Garcia suppresses her urge to say ‘Awwww’ or to fistpump dramatically because, although both feel appropriate, you rarely see that sort of thing in the final scene of a romantic movie. Reid staggers a little but then he’s right in it with Prentiss, wrapping her up and giving back with such power that Garcia feels her cheeks heat. She looks around, suddenly feeling like the skeevy third wheel that she’s been all along, and then has a great idea and fishes out her phone.

“I don’t want to run anymore,” Prentiss says shakily when they both come up for air. Her grip on Reid is so tight her knuckles have gone white. “I don’t know what that leaves us with, but I don’t wanna run.”

He’s breathing hard as he holds her close, suddenly grinning as they lean their foreheads together. “Then don’t. Stay with me instead. Stay until we figure out what happens next.”

“I have a flight to London in two hours… I’ve got seventeen open case files-”

“No, you don’t,” Garcia chirps up. “Well, you still have the case files, but your plane ticket has been cancelled and refunded.” She waves around her smartphone triumphantly. “I guess you’ll have to try a later flight. Or tomorrow. Or never.”

“Garcia…” Prentiss growls unconvincingly.

“Not my fault you forgot I was here.” 

She pops up from the steps and grips them both into a hug of her making. Appropriateness be damned - she’s been working on this deal for months and having it head for the mountainside only to pull up at the last moment is totally a hug-worthy event in her books. She squeezes them until they both meep a little and then she lets them go because they still have tons of personal b.s. to sort through before this becomes official and real.

“Go on now… get back inside, you two. You’ve got mind-blowing make-up sex, scrambled eggs, and logistics to attend to. In that order. Scoot.”

She’s making herding movements with her hands while Reid’s face goes red and he looks skyward for salvation.

“Jesus…”

Prentiss just smiles and pulls him towards the door. She gives Garcia a look of such heartfelt warmth that Garcia feels tears threatening again. As they make it over the threshold and Garcia turns to leave, she hears Reid clearing his throat.

“Penelope, I know that you broke your promise to me.”

She looks back at him propping the security door open with a bare foot, the fingers of one hand tightly woven into Prentiss’s. His eyes are huge and serious making him seem oddly intimidating standing there in his rumpled sleepwear. He holds her gaze for a second longer and then nods once.

“Thank you.”

Garcia suddenly feels like she could fly back to her apartment. “I told you that you would, Baby Boy.”

“I’ll never doubt you again.” His mouth curls shyly and then he waves at her - that stupid wave she loves about him - and then he disappears into his building with Emily.

_Finally._


	12. Chapter 12

They’re all crammed into a booth at Murphy’s and Garcia is delighted beyond all measure because she’s almost sitting on top of her Honey Bear and nowhere in all the possible quantum realities of the universe is that a bad thing. They’ve been there a while already, getting their drink on, waiting for Prentiss’s team to join them and Garcia hopes it won’t be that much longer because Hotch is looking like he’s itching to leave. She can’t blame him - he’s got other things on his mind - but he agreed that it was a good idea for the newest BAU team to get to know the old one since they’ll be working out of the same office and presumably sharing info, assets, team members, etc. He wants his team and Prentiss’s team to be familiar if not close.

Garcia’s phone beeps and she waves it at Hotch and mouths ‘They’ll be here in 5’ over the general din of the bar. He nods at her and settles back a bit, taking a long pull from his beer.

“I still think this is weird,” Morgan half mumbles, half growls in her ear and she feels like telling him that she doesn’t care what he thinks but to go ahead and feel free to keep talking about it in that tone. “Prentiss should be working with us, not on another team.”

Garcia looks across the table at Reid who’s rosy from drinking and talking animatedly with J.J. about something.

“She needs the separation, Boo. And it’s a promotion - she’s not just a field agent, she’s a SSAC. It’s the closest thing to what she had with Interpol. You didn’t expect her to come back for _less_ , did you?”

“I expected her to come back for us, P.”

Garcia rolls her eyes at him. “Of course she came back for us.” _Some of us more than others…_ “Your jealousy - unless it’s about me - isn’t sexy, Love Muffin.”

“I’m always jealous about you, Pink Mama,” he whispers as he gives her a grin.

“Better,” she purrs, and then she sees Prentiss and company and waves them over.

The group shuffles around the banquette to add the members of Prentiss’s team (Cho, Peebles, Lafayette, Nazeem, and their technical analyst who’s improbably named Smith). It’s a tight fit, which means that the newbs have to get drinking a.s.a.p. and start getting friendly, but Prentiss manages to find a spot on the end right next to Reid like it was waiting for her. Which, let’s face it, it was. She grins at everyone, makes the introductions and then slides an arm over Reid shoulders as she launches into a retelling of the case they just closed. Reid leans back and listens with a contented smile on his face.

“Hey… see that?” Morgan pokes Garcia in Reid’s direction. “What’s the kid up to?”

“He’s not a kid anymore,” she smirks and shines on his tell-me-more face.

A few more rounds happen and it all seems to go well. Rossi has started flirting with Cho but she’s just throwing it back at him with an impressive amount of sass that ensures he’ll continue doing it. Lafayette grew up in Baton Rouge and she’s heard that J.J. spends a lot of time in Louisiana, so they fall into conversation easily. Nazeem and Smith are friendly but seem to stick together. Garcia thinks she sees something there and makes a note to investigate the two guys further when she has a moment. Peebles has a wife at home with, like, a zillion kids so he and Hotch use fatherhood as an excuse to cut out early. Hotch leans into Prentiss before he leaves and Garcia can see him offering her his congratulations. He looks at Reid for a split second and then smiles and just walks away.

_Huh. I wonder how long he’s known?_

It’s Rossi’s bright idea to start dancing. Despite Cho’s static towards him, she agrees to show him up on the dance floor. Morgan naturally cocks an eyebrow at Garcia and she nods enthusiastically. They’re shuffling out of the booth when Nazeem asks Prentiss to dance in a courtly manner that seems more about mutual respect than the need to bust some moves with his boss. She turns to Reid and both Garcia and Morgan are close enough to hear her say ‘Do you mind?’

He smiles tenderly and shakes his head. “Not at all. We’ll dance later.”

“Wait,” Morgan interrupts with a sarcastic grin. “The kid can dance?”

“He sure can,” Prentiss grins back and then turns to Reid and pulls him in for a wonderfully inappropriate kiss. There’s tongue and everything - it’s spectacular. She strokes his hair when she finally pulls away and whispers, “I’ll be back.”

Reid nods and turns around to those left at the table. Smith and Lafayette seem impressed. J.J. looks happily shocked. Morgan looks like they both just peeled their faces off. Garcia jabs him in the ribs and he snaps his mouth shut.

“Spoiler alert,” she giggles as she drags him to the dance floor. “They weren’t actually talking about dancing.”

“Oh, maaaaaan,” Morgan shakes his head. “How long has _that_ been happening?”

“Depends on which one of them you ask.”

“Well then, how long have you known? Wait… did _you_ have a hand in that?” Morgan makes a wiggly gesture back towards Reid at the table. “ ‘Cause you seem pretty pleased with yourself right now.”

“I have a hand in everything, guapo. You should know better.”

“Seriously, Penelope, is it for real? I need to know how worried I should be for him. And for her.”

“They’re living together, Derek. They’ve been glued together since she resigned from Interpol. She’s looking for a place - and based on what I saw in London it’s no wonder that Reid’s tiny apartment won’t cut it - but there’s no doubt that it’ll be _their_ place. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if they made it legal in a year or two.” Garcia looks up into Morgan’s flummoxed expression and cups his cheek in her palm. “It’s real and they’re solid. Don’t worry for them - just be happy they finally got it together.”

Morgan pulls her against him and begins to sway even though the music is considerably more upbeat than that. “I guess that explains why she didn’t come back to the team.”

“Well, that and _she got a goddamned promotion_. Jeez, Pouty Prince, not everyone exists to complete your world, you know. Except me, of course.” She slaps his arm lightly as they dance.

“Okay, okay… I’m done knuckledragging.” Morgan is quiet for a long time, just rocking them both while he thinks. “It’s just…”

“It’s just what?”

“It’s just plain impressive. Isn’t it? I would never have imagined them together.”

“It is. You wouldn’t believe how much work went into it though.”

“Work?”

“Yeah,” she smiles up at him and winks. “Ask me to show you the Powerpoint presentation sometime. It’ll blow your mind.”

**Author's Note:**

> Egon Schiele was a real artist and I encourage you to Google his work. However, the description of the drawing Prentiss gave Reid is fictional, as is the description of Reid's drawing of Prentiss (although it is based on actual sketches Gubler has made of Brewster). The movie poster for _Nosferatu The Vampyre_ is also a real thing (and quite famous in a cult sort of way), and I once knew a woman who had one over her bed. I'm still not sure if it was 'cool' or 'creepy' either.


End file.
